The hurdle that the Republicans face in CD22

Now that Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace has officially withdrawn his bid to be a write-in candidate in CD22, it all comes down to Shelley Sekula-Gibbs and whatever money the state and national GOP will throw at her. Her task is not going to be easy. She’s going to have to convince an awful lot of people to break their regular voting habit to have any chance at winning.

Let’s crunch a few numbers to see what I mean. I did a little of this at my blog over the weekend:

[2004 CD22 Democratic candidate Richard] Morrison got 112,034 votes in 2004, compared to DeLay’s 150,386, according to the Secretary of State. […] If you assume turnout is about 2/3 in a non-Presidential year as it is in a Presidential, then there will be about 170,000 to 180,000 ballots cast this year (in 2002 in the old CD22 there were 159,000 votes, with DeLay getting 100,000 and Dem Tim Riley collecting almost 56,000), and if you assume Lampson gets the same share as Morrison did, he’d be in the 70,000-75,000 vote range. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that Lampson, with five times Morrison’s cash and operating in a more favorable environment overall, beats that pretty easily. I’d also expect Bob Smither to get at least 20,000 votes. That means Sekula-Gibbs has to get at least 80%, maybe 90% of the at most 100,000 remaining voters to write her name in, and that’s assuming that Lampson hasn’t already claimed a majority share of the electorate.

I’m taking a wild guess about Smither, but not a completely wild one. Normally, in a race between a major party candidate and a Libertarian, the Lib gets ten to fifteen percent of the vote. These are usually races where the unopposed party is dominant, though, which is the reverse of what we have here. On the one hand, Smither has gotten a lot more exposure than your average Libertarian, and some public expressions of support for him from Republicans. On the other hand, a lot of that was predicated on a lack of consensus for One True Write-In, so he may well fade into the background again. I still think he’ll perform more like a Lib in a two-way race than in a three-way, so my 20K guess will stand for now.

That brings us to Sekula-Gibbs. As I see it, she has two big problems, beyond Lampson and his $3 million campaign fund. One is Smither, who just by being on the ballot will siphon off votes that she otherwise might have gotten. And two is straight-ticket voting – since she isn’t on the ballot, she won’t receive any straight-party votes, no matter how many Republicans endorse her.

I’ve looked at straight-ticket voting before, and it bears revisiting. An awful lot of votes that major party candidates get come from people who push one button on the eSlate machines. In 2004 in the CD22 portion of Harris County, 46,005 of the 64,590 votes that Tom DeLay received came from straight-ticket voters. That’s over 71% of his total. I don’t have precinct data for Fort Bend, but about 55% of the countywide vote for George Bush was striaght ticket; given the lower turnout in downballot races and the fact that DeLay underperformed Bush by seven points in the CD22 part of Fort Bend, I’d say the ratio was about the same there.

So let’s put it all together, and let’s be generous to Sekula-Gibbs. Let’s say turnout is 180,000 as above, and Lampson gets 75,000 votes, which at 41.7% is less than one percentage point better than Morrison. In a three-party race, Smither would have gotten about 5000 votes regardless, so let’s credit him with that. That leaves 100,000 potential voters for Sekula-Gibbs. The straight-ticket ratio is somewhat lower in non-Presidential years – let’s say it’s 55% of the total for Republicans, not 70%. So there’s 55,000 straight-party Republicans, and 45,000 nominal Republicans who go through each race. I believe Smither will get about 15,000 of those nominal Republicans, but let’s dial that back to 10,000 and give the remaining 35,000 to Sekula-Gibbs. That means that to catch Lampson, she needs about 73% of those straight-ticket voters to also cast a ballot in CD22, with her name on it.

You can see why the experts don’t think much of her chances. Lampson may very well do better than 75,000 votes – frankly, I think he has an excellent chance of getting a majority of the turnout. I only gave Smither 15,000 votes in the projection above – he may do better than that. And who’s to say that the nominal Republicans will be so faithful for Shelley?

She does have some advantages over your usual write-in candidate: Money, assuming the promised millions are real; higher than average name ID, given all the coverage of this race; being in the majority party; and having to educate and convince people who should already be inclined to want to help her. There’s no historical comparison to make here – this race is unique, just as the four-headed Governor’s race is. We’re all guessing, but at least we now have some numbers to play with when we make those guesses. It’s still just a guess, though.

4 Responses

While she didn’t have to deal with the bizarre e-Slate system or straight-ticket voting (which isn’t allowed in Washington), Linda Smith beat incumbent Jolene Unsoeld in 1994 to win election in WA-3. A write-in candidate winning a Congressional seat is not unprecedented.

Zack – While that may be a psychological barrier, the Secretary of State has said that this is not a spelling test. Any reasonable approximation of “Shelley Sekula-Gibbs” will be accepted, as long as the voter’s intent is deemed to be clear. Which is as it should be.

Sekula- Gibbs needs to marry some high profile man with an easy to pronounce and spell name so she can try to get elected like when she first ran for city council. She can then hope he dies and change her name back.